Dave Grohl admits he would have come up with a better than than Foo Fighters if he expected the band to be successful.
The former Nirvana drummer entered a studio months after Kurt Cobain’s death to record a bunch of songs he had written, and played all the instruments on what would become the Foo Fighters’ self-titled debut.
Not wanting to live off Nirvana’s legacy, he came up with the moniker to avoid using his own name. But if he could go back in time, he’d change it.
Grohl tells CBS 60 Minutes: “I called it Foo Fighters because I didn’t want to put my name on it at first. Had I imagined that it would last more than a month and a half I might have named it something else. It’s the dumbest band name ever. Foo Fighters is a slang term that they used for UFOs in World War II.”
The frontman discusses the process followed while making the upcoming eighth Foos album Sonic Highways, which is accompanied by a documentary series which is begin screened by the BBC.
And he takes aim at reality TV shows like American Idol, which he says have no right to tell people whether or not they should make music.
He says: “Don’t worry about what everyone else thinks. Who’s to say who’s good or not? Imagine Bob Dylan standing there, singing Blowin’ In The Wind in front of those judges. ‘Sorry, it’s a little nasally and a little flat. Next’
“I would never make it. People need to appreciate their voice. I don’t wanna sing like someone else, I wanna sing like me.”
Sonic Highways is out on November 10, while the documentary series of the same name is currently airing on BBC Four.
